Cultivation Nerd-Chapter 337 - The Mirror Of Silver Fate

Summer was on its last legs, the blazing season dimming with each passing day. The sun still burned strong, but its edge had softened and no longer had the oppressive heat of midsummer, but a gentler warmth gilding the horizon. The sky wore a faint haze of gold and copper, clouds stretched thin like fading brushstrokes across a vast canvas.

Even the fields shimmered in the distance, their greens tinged with a hint of yellow.

Life was much more beautiful when there was no one to annoy me.

I sat on the roof of my library with a cup of tea cradled in my hand, steam curling upward in lazy ribbons, and watched the sunrise. It climbed slowly, casting molten amber across the rooftops, painting the sect grounds in shifting light. Shadows stretched long and thin, reluctant to let go of the night, while the last breath of summer clung stubbornly to the air.

Summer was ending. These were the final days of the strong sun before autumn’s cool breath swept in to claim the world.

I felt strangely melancholic about it.

I guess I’d reached the age, at least mentally, where everything carried a deeper meaning than it deserved.

Since that first raid on the library, nobody had tried anything again. Summer had passed peacefully enough.

Sure, a couple of elders had gone missing in action, MIA. Everyone knew the truth but never said it aloud: most of the “disappearances” were elders who had decided to abandon the sect.

At least they left quietly, without slapping the sect across the face.

The Blazing Sun Sect was in decline, though everyone wore masks of strength, pretending otherwise.

And with leadership treated like a plague, things weren’t getting better.

In the past, when the sect was powerful, people fought tooth and nail to seize the leader’s seat. Now, everyone saw it for the hot potato it was.

A surprising number had turned their eyes toward Song Song’s father, but from what she said, he barely attended meetings. Clearly, he didn’t care.

Some even looked to Song Song for guidance. But I warned her the time wasn’t right.

With war looming, that chair was a deathtrap.

Song Song, of course, was confident she could survive and even relished the challenge. But I’d been firm, and in the end, she listened.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. Wu Yan had broken through multiple times this summer to reach the fourth, fifth, and sixth stars of Foundation Establishment.

I was damn proud of her. Her progress proved that reaching Nascent Soul was just a matter of time… and probably not much time at that.

Even so, I told her not to rush and to focus on comprehending her element. But she seemed confident, so I let her do her thing.

She might soon break through and become a Core Formation Cultivator, and that was something to look forward to.

Still, a part of me worried.

I’d only checked that she was mentally stable, that her element wasn’t influencing her too much, and that her techniques didn’t contradict it. But her element was literally change, so nearly every technique she devised seemed tied to that concept. As long as everything aligned into an ultimate technique in the end, it should be fine.

I jumped down from the roof of my building, not bothering to cushion the landing, and hit the ground feet-first. After a quick sweep with my senses and pretending to be doing mundane chores like cleaning and organizing books, I knew no elder would waste attention on me.

I entered the library tower, slipped into the hidden passage, and descended to the basement lab. Passing the car-sized paw floating in its tank of preserving liquid, I stopped before the silver mirror.

It had no name, unlike most artifacts, though given my plans, maybe I should christen it something like the Silver Road Mirror. Because it had opened up many roads for me to advance, and opened doors that fixed many of the more menial and tedious problems.

Drawing my silver sword, I plunged it into the mirror and turned it like a key. The gateway opened as a dark veil covered everything reflected in the mirror, and I walked right through it.

This time, I wasn’t teleported above the castle-like building, but closer to its yard. My control over the teleportation was improving, though it was still experimental.

I had no business meddling too deeply with an array that created a miniature world, but I could still tweak a few things. Inspired by Minecraft, I set up an imaginary array to calculate coordinates, such as X, Z, and Y, for height. The Y-axis was giving me trouble, though.

The easiest fix would be tinkering directly with the silver sword, but that required a higher level of array mastery and artifact crafting skills I hadn’t yet developed. A pain, really.

I floated down gently, landing on the grassy yard. Wu Yan was cultivating quietly in one corner, eyes closed. I didn’t disturb her.

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Instead, I stepped into the main hallway of the castle where the bodies had once lain. I’d buried them outside the grounds in nameless graves, even the one that held the teleport point to the inheritance site.

Descending into the basement, I entered what had once been a stark, empty chamber carved with the Sky Grade Technique. The air remained cool here.

But now, the place had transformed. Towering shelves lined the chamber, parchment and ink scenting the air. Soft lanterns glowed, their light glinting off rows of carefully arranged tomes and scrolls. What had once been an empty vault was now a proper library.

Many of the volumes were ones I had painstakingly copied from the Blazing Sun Sect’s collection; histories, cultivation manuals, obscure treatises no one cared to study. Each spine carried a fragment of wisdom I found worth preserving, gathered into this hidden trove beneath the castle, waiting for curious eyes in the future.

With the sect in decline, I’d even begun to nurture ambitions of my own.

The Blazing Sun Immortal’s dream had been to make this place a frontier, a wild west of cultivation. But that wasn’t my dream, and never would be.

What I wanted was an organization, something like a school, though closer to a university, where anyone could learn anything after mastering the basics. A place built on ideals, not power plays.

I had plans to keep the great sects off my back when I opened it. But there was still another issue. The problem was simple: I lacked power.

Yes, I had Song Song, and she’d always back me. But I wanted this to stand on my ideals, not lean on someone else’s strength. I didn’t want them invalidated just because I was weak.

Ideally, I’d wait until I reached Core Formation before opening such a school. That would be perfect. But it might take too long, and with the way I envisioned things, the first decade or two would be rocky anyway. A Foundation Establishment cultivator could still set it in motion.

Just… not a one-star Foundation Establishment cultivator. The weakest stage wouldn’t do.

I sighed.

There was too much to think about, but this felt like the first step on the road toward my goals.

I closed my eyes, drew in a steady breath, and let my senses stretch outward until the world itself bent beneath my will. Then, with a pulse of my Sky Grade Technique, space folded. In a blink, I was no longer in the library’s depths but above ground, cool air brushing my face as though nothing had changed.

But behind me, reality trembled. A jagged crack spread outward, edges shimmering with the pull of the void.

I turned, pinched the top of the fracture between two fingers, and dragged downward. The rupture sealed, the tremor faded, and the air stitched whole once more.

Wu Yan opened her eyes, watched me for a heartbeat, then closed them and returned to cultivation.

She was used to my experiments here. With all my free time, I delved deeper into the concept of space and something else.

I had also been trying to study the concepts of fate and time.

When it came to these things, most of the knowledge and theories I had from my previous life were useless. Progress was about what one would expect with subjects this complicated. I was reasonably certain fate existed, but not how “written in stone” it really was. For most people, it didn’t matter; they lived and died by their own choices. Except for the chosen ones.

I glanced at Wu Yan from the corner of my eye, wondering where fate might lead someone like her. But with her element, it didn’t matter what fate, the heavens, or anyone else planned. She would eventually change it.

She was here to make her breakthroughs away from prying eyes, since each one of hers caused a commotion. She had also agreed to help me test some experiments related to fate itself.

Alongside that, I had been studying the space here, with results far better than just blindly trying to make the inside of a barrier larger than the outside. I was also experimenting with plants, working to build a balanced ecosystem after wiping out the original creatures of this place once I had learned everything I could from them.

…

After a long day of diagnostics and experiments, I stepped out of the mirror and returned home, leaving Wu Yan to cultivate inside.

When I arrived, Fu Yating was watering the flowers behind our house. She seemed a little gloomy without Wu Yan around to keep her company. Maybe I should spend more time with her.

I landed softly behind her and sighed. That single sound was enough to make her turn. The gloom vanished in an instant, replaced by her smile.

“Done already?” she asked.

“Yes,” I nodded. “Wu Yan will be back soon, she’s finishing her next breakthrough.”

Her cultivation speed was absurd, but Fu Yating had grown used to it and only nodded.

“Do you want me to cook you something?” she asked, setting the watering can aside.

“No need,” I said, lowering myself onto the grass and lying flat, eyes tracing the vast blue sky.

I felt her gaze linger on me. Neither of us spoke as she sat beside me, then suddenly reclined, resting her head against my shoulder while staring upward.

“So, when we have kids, do you want a daughter or a son?” she asked, as if my answer could change what sex our child would be.

“It doesn’t really matter,” I replied. “Though I’d like a daughter. With you around, she’d learn a lot. You’d make a good mother.”

She smiled softly, a sigh slipping past her lips as her fingers traced along my collarbone.

“I know. I’ll be the best mother in the world.”

Without answering, I slid an arm around her shoulders. It felt a little awkward, a move pulled from nowhere, but I didn’t want a marriage without warmth.

The sad truth was I wasn’t sure I could give her that. People in love thought about each other constantly, but the only things that occupied my mind that way were experiments, research, and ideas. Anything but romance.

Just as the moment settled, one of my detection arrays stirred. Wu Yan’s Qi surged out of the basement.

She just came out like that?

The truth was quickly clarified: she had broken through to reach a seven-star Foundation Establishment.

“Something wrong?” Fu Yating asked, noticing my shift.

“No, nothing to worry about,” I reassured her.

“The last time you said that, the next day I heard half a dozen Foundation Establishment Cultivators attacked the library,” she frowned.

We had quietly covered up the fact that a Core Elder had betrayed the sect. Officially, he’d been honored with a grave, remembered as having died against a group of Core Formation beasts.

“Which I defeated before dinner got cold, and without a scratch on me,” I said.

At least no injuries she could see.

“I just…” her eyes lifted to mine, wide and earnest. “I just worry about you.”